My role as Integration Lead mostly expands upon my previous role as a systems engineer. As both an engineering lead and a member of the leadership team, I help to lead, guide and train the engineering team through projects across several industry sectors.Throughout the projects I have worked on, I have been comfortable in communication, co-design and training delivery with clients, MoD, suppliers and bid partners - including several industry primes.Over my previous and current roles, I have helped to implement an eco-system of systems within the company which are commonly used across the board on the majority of UxVs developed. The eco-system is designed to be massively expandable and adaptable for future payloads and integrations.In this role I have been directly involved in and responsible for several projects, including:- High performance UAVs: I was one of 2 primary engineers responsible for the design, manufacture, test and iteration of a high performance jet propelled UAV. I designed, installed and tested the complete systems architecture of the aircraft including autopilot, power distribution, actuation, engine management, fuelling and communications. During this project my role also extended to the structural design of the UAV with a structure focussed around high manufacturability and the expected large forces on the airframe. The structural design required I introduce finite element analysis (FEA) to the IM skillset.- Surface Vessels (USVs): I designed the internal electronics for a high performance surface vessel. The design focussed around long term salt water exposure with consideration to materials, connectors and systems used. I designed and implemented custom large battery packs for the vessel which have operated flawlessly for more than a year of testing.I am regularly involved in physical prototyping and manufacturing with many common and composite materials, using standard workshop tooling as well as 3 axis CNC machining.

As the principal systems engineer on a range of both internal and client projects, I was responsible for the design, test, implementation, and operation of Unmanned Vehicle (UxV) systems. My primary focus was on the onboard and ground station systems and electronics for large fixed-wing and multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs / UAS), small Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), and sea vessels (USVs).As the role was both client facing and technical I was able to ensure client specifications and requirements were being worked towards and met.During my time in this role, I was directly involved in a number of projects, including:Striker: Striker is a large (~25kg) internally developed heavy lift multi-rotor UAV, I was responsible for taking the initial manually piloted concept UAV and integrating and testing a complete set of systems allowing autonomous operation. Once flight proven, I was responsible for integrating a wide range of payloads and sensors for numerous clients and trials, most notably: DTC long range communications, Vizgard optical detection and tracking and ReVector IMSI Capture.As the acting, GVC qualified, multi-rotor pilot for Intrepid Minds, I amassed >30 hours of flight time on Striker during testing and operational trials, including red team ISR flights at Exercise Cambrian Patrol and several defence project bids.Pizookie: Pizookie was an RAF RCO fixed wing UAV project. As a ~150kg, 3d printed, twin jet aircraft it was novel in several ways. My responsibilities for this aircraft encompassed the entire systems architecture including control systems, communications, power delivery, cable harnessing, engine management and fuel systems. As a 150kg aircraft, Pizookie had several redundancy and regulation requirements under the Large Model Association (LMA) which I had to ensure the systems abode by, including: redundant communications links, redundant power and relevant failsafe systems.

As president of the Simurq Aeronautics society it was my role to oversee both of our student-led teams, Volaticus and Project Hex, to ensure an appropriate engineering approach was used whilst developing both entries into the IMechE UAS Challenge 2019/20 and to support the other team leaders as required.During my presidency I initiated the linking of Simurq Aeronautics with the Sheffield Space Initiative to open avenues for team collaboration, skill and resource sharing and international competition entries. I also handled co-ordination with the students union, engineering departments, the social media team, funding applications and travel planning.

Project Hex is a team working towards yearly entries into the IMecheE UAS Challenge. It was my role to oversee the 3 subteams within the project; Control, Structures and Electronics, as we worked towards the June 2020 competition.I was responsible for ensuring the subteams progressed as expected so deliverable deadlines and system criteria were met.I also served as a structures team leader during this term helping to realise the designs created.

I was the lead developer of a small team, working with and overseeing the other developers working towards the control system for the hexacopter entered into the 2019 IMechE UAS Challenge.During the year we developed a custom target recognition software, HipPy, which identified ground targets and interfaced with a Pixhawk autopilot to navigate around a course and drop payloads.HipPy, designed to run on low power hardware (Raspberry Pi), was programmed in Python, using OpenCV for image processing, Tesseract for OCR and Dronekit / Mavlink for communication. A professional, systems engineering approach was used throughout the development process along with using Git for version control.Using EZ-WifiBroadcast we made use of the monitoring capabilities of some WiFi cards to create an analogue like, low latency, link between the ground station and vehicle.

Within the Project Hex control team it was my role to aid in development of a MATLAB & Simulink model which could identify ground targets from a live video feed provided over a ground-to-air WiFi link.This model was designed to be auto-compiled onto a Rasbperry Pi situated within a hexacopter for entry into the 2018 IMechE UAS Challenge.